CD Reviews

"I am amazed upon reading through the reviews here that almost no one mentions my favorite track on this record, and one of the happiest songs of all time: I Feel So Good (I Wanna Boogie)!

I have loved this song like mad since the first day I heard it in 1993. Of all the classic and lesser-known blues my friend Freimuth Fischkal in Berlin turned me on to (a fine guitarist and great guy, by the way...gruss dich und vielen danke, Freimuth!), this was a track out of thousands that jumped out and grabbed me in a special way.

Everybody knows the blues are about feeling low-down, but I've always also loved the blues that are about feeling good again. And this track just can't be beat for that purpose. Along with Shuggie Otis' Inspiration Information, it's one of the songs that always gets me back to that good place where life makes sense and it's time to go have fun.

It's just a simple little 12-bar riff, an up-tempo shuffle, but the rhythm section meshes its gears and propels the groove into orbit right off the bat, and never lets up. It's as if Sam's daring us to feel this good along with him...and why not? Jump up and dance your blues away! Now there's a good reason to make music...maybe the best. And Sam's full-on wail of a voice says it all: you can't sing like that if you don't really know what feeling' good is all about.

The whole album is truly solid, and as a guitarist I really dig Sam's compact, clean tone. He mixed his singing and playing beautifully, and his singing is excellent. He can really hit the big note, and my other favorite track here, I Don't Want No Woman, features his large voice in full cry, as does All Of Your Love. (And I guarantee that Plant knew this album insde out; Zep is full of Magic Sam-ish vocal moments.)

What a shame that Sam died at 32, just as he was revvin' up. But he did leave us another great album as well, Black Magic, which is just icing on the cake, for West Side Soul is a killer.

"I eagerly looked forward to hearing West Side Soul,which I bought together with Black Magic. As soon as I heard "That's all I need", the first track, I was blown away by the music, the musician and the musicianship. Sam's voice and guitar have a unique intensity, immediacy, power and presence that are complemented by a tight, accomplished band. Though a studio album, it conveys the excitement and emotion of a live performance.

That said, as great as the material and the performers are, there's the no-small-matter of the sound quality of the recording, which is, well, awful for a studio album recorded in 1967 - limited dynamic range and distortion, with the latter especially apparent and impossible to ignore on Sam's vocals. West Side Soul sounds like it was recorded with a cheap mike on a two track tape recorder and mixed for an AM car radio - a tragic disservice to Magic Sam, to his band, to his audience and to posterity.

West Side Soul is a blues treasure, a masterpiece badly in need of and unquestionably deserving remastering and re-release. As is, I found West Side Soul to be a terrific performance marred by terrible sound quality."

Classic Chicago Blues--an almost perfect album

blue barry | key west | 09/25/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This is recognized by all as one of the classic blues albums of all time, probably the best Chicago blues album ever recorded. It is just about perfect. In saying that, I do not minimize the work of Howling Wolf or Muddy Waters who did their best recordings as singles. But,if you only are going to have 10 blues cds in your collection, this is a must have. Listen to these vocals with their honest emotion, appreciate this songwriting, the perfect guitar work and you will have a standard to measure all blues music by, particularly blues in the Chicago style. The present blues scene is populated by way too much weak songwriting that does little more than act as a way to get to the long guitar solo. Having said that, the blues should evolve and not be stuck in Chicago 50 years ago. West Side Soul was ground-breaking and my point is good music stands the test of time."